Public schools, private schools, home schools and democracy (idea)

I suppose my concern is that, while public schools may promote democratic citizenhood, they are less likely to induce good republican citizenhood (using "democratic" and "republican" in the sense of governmental models, not in the sense of donkeys and elephants).

Looking at the government of the US from the perspective of the framers, a liberal (protecting the liberties of people) society is preserved by a parliamentary republic which is sufficiently conservative (slow and hesitant to act or intervene). Such a legislature can be realized by having many factions represented (the more the merrier), producing gridlock and all flavors of legislative logjams as safeguards to keep the government from being able to do much of anything (read: "being able to step on too many people's rights") without truly broad-based support. Indeed, the reduction of much of US federal politics to two-party scuffles is itself problematic to this model, but that's another node.

Taken over the long term, such constrictions cannot help but diminish the mindshare held by dissenting opinions (quite apart from their pragmatic, legal, and rational strengths), thus de-factionalizing (homogenizing) the population and diminishing the protective value of an adversarial republican government.